{"id":78179,"date":"2024-03-27T15:54:11","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T20:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=78179"},"modified":"2024-03-27T15:54:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T20:54:13","slug":"off-the-shelf-reviews-high-and-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=78179","title":{"rendered":"Off The Shelf Reviews: High and Low"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By CONNOR KEATING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After forcing myself to watch the \u201cMonster Hunter\u201d movie<\/a> and \u201cThe Land Unknown,\u201d I really needed a palate cleanser. A nice, legitimately good movie. How about another Kurosawa film? However, this time it isn\u2019t a samurai film, but instead a crime drama. That film is, of course, Kurosawa\u2019s 1963 masterpiece \u201cHigh and Low,\u201d which is apparently getting a remake\u2026 we\u2019ll see how that turns out\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyways, \u201cHigh and Low\u201d follows a shoe designer who works for a large company and is currently in the middle of a feud with some of the other heads of the company. So, to gain control, he puts a mortgage on everything he owns in order to buy almost half of the company. However, things go south when a kidnapper takes his son and holds him for a ransom of $30 million. At first, he\u2019s willing to pay, but when it\u2019s discovered that the kidnapper accidentally snagged the chauffeur\u2019s son instead, he becomes far more stingy with his money. Does he pay the ransom and lose everything, or sacrifice a boy for his own livelihood? It soon becomes a race for the police to track down and catch the criminal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This film isn\u2019t what I normally watch, but after seeing Kurosawa\u2019s samurai films, I decided to give this one a blind shot when I found it at Barnes & Noble, so the fact that I enjoy this film so much should say a lot about its quality. The film can pretty much be split into two halves. The first half features a lot of intense debates over whether our protagonist, Kingo Gondo, should pay the ransom, while the police have to secretly listen in on the telephone conversations without the kidnapper finding out. The second half is where the police have to thoroughly analyze every piece of evidence in order to figure out who the kidnapper is and arrest him. While the film may sound dull, it manages to be very engaging and intense the whole way through. The ideological debates from the first half are very interesting, and it really helps that all the characters are very well written and acted.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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The investigation team listens in on Kingo Gondo\u2019s phone call with the kidnapper. <\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

While it may sound like our protagonist, Kingo Gondo, is some mean, greedy businessman, he does have a bit of a softer and more likable side. For starters, the reason he\u2019s trying to buy out so much of the company is because he\u2019s been with it for so long, values the company, and the newer heads want to diminish the quality of the shoes in order to increase profit, and because Gondo is a shoemaker first and foremost, he isn\u2019t happy about that. He also clearly cares about his family and the chauffeur. He wants him to get his son back, but that would put his own family on the streets and he\u2019d be completely booted out of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gondo\u2019s wife, Reiko, is very caring and wants Gondo to pay the ransom for the chauffeur\u2019s sake, though he\u2019s worried about how she would fare being broke since she was born into a wealthy family, while Gondo had to climb his way up. The chauffeur himself is a bit of a pathetic man, desperate to get his son back, but then the next day, he\u2019s telling Gondo not to worry about it. His character probably wouldn\u2019t work well if it weren\u2019t for the stellar acting, creating a man you really feel sorry for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also various employees of Gondo\u2019s company, National Shoes, that act as additional antagonistic forces, causing Gondo to think twice before paying the ransom. This leads to some additional drama and betrayals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are the police officers, they\u2019re all pretty cool, and the focus gets shifted towards them during the second half while they\u2019re hunting for the criminal. There are quite a few of them, but I\u2019d say the two main standouts are Chief Detective Tokura, who acts as the knowledgeable and cool leader of the investigation, and Chief Detective \u201cBos\u2019n\u201d Taguchi, who sort of acts as a very slight bit of comic relief. The chemistry between all of the investigators really strengthens the second half, making it so that there\u2019s never a dull moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, though, there\u2019s also the kidnapper himself, who we don\u2019t see too often, with only a few brief clips around the middle of him scanning over newspaper articles about the investigation, but once the film reaches the third act, he becomes far more prominent. The film ultimately concludes with a very well-done interaction between him and Gondo, where the two are finally able to meet and confront each other. The performance of the kidnapper in this scene is one of the best I have ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Kingo Gondo finally comes face to face with the man who held him for ransom. <\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cHigh and Low\u201d is a fantastic film with a great cast of characters, an interesting and nail-biting plot filled with philosophical debates over class and what\u2019s right and wrong, intense investigations, and elaborate schemes. All of it comes together with Kurosawa\u2019s excellent direction and some powerful performances to deliver one of the greatest films of the 1960s. I give this film nine \u201cSenkichi Omura sightings\u201d out of ten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connor Keating is a junior at Fort Hays State University, studying digital media and journalism. Connor is an old-school movie fan, particularly Japanese monster movies, and is an avid DVD collector.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By CONNOR KEATING Tiger Media Network After forcing myself to watch the \u201cMonster Hunter\u201d movie and \u201cThe Land Unknown,\u201d I really needed a palate cleanser.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":78182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,3391,3505,55],"tags":[15389,12484,21,15529],"class_list":["post-78179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-movie-reviews","category-local-movies","category-opinion","tag-connor-keating","tag-movie-reviews","tag-movies-2","tag-off-the-shelf-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/halposter.jpg?fit=960%2C752&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78183,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78179\/revisions\/78183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/78182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}